Dream Team
by Rokhal
Summary: Alistair's Apprentice and Azazel's Boy King rescue an angel together. AU as of 5.21.
1. Chorus

This is AU as of 5.21. It's also kinda Kripke'd by 5.22. No heavy spoilers for Season 5 since it's AU, but 5.14 is pretty important for the premise.

Gen. Violence. Dark themes. Schmoop.

Set between 5.18 and 5.20.

* * *

There was a table slapped together from boards and sawhorses, cluttered with salt and jugs and funnels and strange, mispurposed tools like the wire grill brush matted with human skin and fat. Iron chains. A turkey baster. Elbow-length gloves and wading boots. Duck tape and marker pens. A 100cc syringe and the biggest hypodermic needle in the clinic.

The abandoned shipping container was cold and echoing, but it was private, oh, hell, was it private, rusting in the middle of the woods like it was waiting for the Boxcar Children. It got Winchesters instead. Sam gripped Dean's tense shoulder as he stared down stonily at the one bowl of holy water that didn't have demon blood in it, and carefully sponged the spatters off Dean's face, away from his mouth.

"You're good," he muttered when he was done.

Dean grabbed the rag and smoothly, efficiently, wiped off his arms, neck, and hands.

"Dean, you didn't have to—" Sam winced. "I mean, I could've—since I'm going to anyway—"

"Well, now we know," Dean said.

They turned to look at the demon, at what was left of it, stripped down to boxers and splotched all over with chemical burns from holy water and salt. It was still dangling by its wrists from ropes in the ceiling and walls, feet hobbled to cargo rings in the floor, an IV of bagged blood running into a vein in one arm and an empty tube running out the other arm into a gallon jug.

They'd brought the O-neg in case the host was alive. Now Sam was going to have to get more.

"Fifty demons," Sam repeated to himself. "How long do you think they've had him?"

"Long enough to get their kicks in before they bait the trap." Dean shucked his t-shirt and flung it savagely at the equipment table before grabbing the rest of his clothes. "Any better ideas yet?"

"Nothing fast enough." Sam licked his lips and scratched the back of his neck. "If I shove you through a table and strangle you again, go ahead and hit me in the nuts."

"Aw, Sammy, you do care."

Sam swallowed bile. "I mean it. Don't let me hurt you, don't let me hurt Cas—you're the only one who can keep me on target, and even then—"

"Sam," said Dean, calm, present, _with it_, as if the robotic prowling thing with the shark smile who'd protested, fearful and mutinous, "I'm working on a concept—you said I could handle it" when Sam had come in and tugged him away from his work just ten minutes ago, had never existed. "Come on, Sam, that was like—like sparring on PCP, or something. Stop angsting and think up another plan A."

"Dean—"

"Drive. Think." Dean slapped him on the shoulder and shoved him at the door.

"Are you—"

"Fine. I'll handle it."

They stepped out into the humid night with the moon overhead and the crickets singing, and the lantern splashing a golden strip of light across the car. Sam put on the headlights and rumbled down the rutted track; in the rearview mirror, Dean slumped on a log. Thinking up alternate plans. Sam hoped the clinic they'd raided wasn't crawling with uniforms by the time he got back, otherwise…

Fifty demons to burn out. Sam wasn't sure it was physically possible to drink enough blood.

* * *

Sam had returned with twelve quarts, anticoagulant, and an armload of sport bottles with straws. Not a better plan A.

They'd flushed all the blood through the host before killing him and the demon, and burning rubber for the station. The police station in Argonne. The station that didn't have a single un-possessed human being, where the hellhounds howled day and night, where Castiel was suffering the most refined tortures it was possible to inflict aboveground. The incredibly obvious trap.

"Two minutes."

They were in a stolen car now, white Honda Civic, the interior vandalized with sigils for restraint, secrecy, and protection on every smooth surface. The station popped into view as they rounded a corner, and Sam reached into the back for a gallon jug.

Dean closed his eyes as he pressed the accelerator. "Go." _Cas had no idea what he dragged up from Hell._

Sam started chugging. Plastic crinkled, breaths came slow and intermittent. The station was getting bigger, every other car was a blue-and-white. Sam dropped the jug and reached back for number two, coughing.

"Hang on," Dean barked, hauling on the wheel, and spun the back bumper into station's main drive with a shrieking donut. He set the parking brake. "Ready?"

Sam polished off the second jug, and there was a vacant look in his eyes, in the way he reached into the back seat for a sports bottle without even noticing the blood on his chin, in the way his eyes drifted over Dean like he was just part of the upholstery.

A cop—demon—was sauntering over to investigate. They had to kill it before it saw their faces.

"Sam. Clock's ticking."

Sam shut his eyes and paused in Hoovering the blood through the straw. "I see them."

"See?" Dean asked, confused, until Sam opened his eyes and black bled out from the pupils as Dean watched. "Just kill 'em all," Dean choked. "Get this over with."

In the rearview mirror, the cop stumbled to the ground, glowing from within.

* * *

_The discussion had gone like this:_

"It's a fortress," Sam said.

Dean nodded stiffly. He wiped blood off his chin and almost licked his fingers clean before Sam smacked them away. "Sounds like," he said, hooking his hands in his pockets. "It's gotta be the angels behind this, I mean, who do you think found Cas first?"

"Joint venture," Sam mused. "Demons get Cas so they can lure us in, angels get you, demons get me. And they probably get to keep Cas, plus who knows what other incentives to make sure they give you up at the end of it."

"That's the MO," Dean grunted. "Goddamn kidnappers." He slumped against the wall and glanced at the demon again, which was grunting and moaning around the two cups of salt duck-taped into its mouth. "So," he said with his suicide smile. "Say we Rambo it. Take all the small arms, spare clips, smoke bombs, work our way in, get to Cas. If they got him under some kinda anti-angel mojo, we get rid of that, and he's our exit."

"They'll kill you," Sam said.

"I'm valuable."

"Sure, valuable enough for a couple centuries of angel gang beatings upstairs. We should maybe avoid dying right now."

"Well, if they move him, we lose him. If they see us, the angels will be right there watching—maybe we could take the sewers—"

"It's…possible," Sam said with a wince.

"Don't tell me you forgot about my evil twin?"

"No. Dean—I mean, if it's either a Kamikazi mission, or, well—it depends on what we're willing to do. What if we killed them all before any of them knew what was happening, two minutes later we have Cas, we're getting out of there, and then…dealing with the fallout."

"The fallout," Dean repeated. His eyes widened and he shrank against the wall. "Sam?"

"We can't afford to die," Sam said. "If we want to get Cas out of there _and_ stay out of their hands, I think it's…possible. We owe Cas."

Dean glanced down at his left palm. There was a sigil on it in marker pen, something that wasn't in any demonology book and that he'd never seen topside until he'd drawn it tonight, that could swing pain and fear into a feedback loop that would last as long as he kept his hand on the victim. By demon standards, that shit was for kindergarteners. "If we do this, they don't get you," he announced. "If you don't think up a better plan, I will kick your ass until you need an ice-pack to sit, and if I go along with this, you do the same to me, but they Do. Not. Get you."

Sam nodded shakily. "Safety first."

* * *

**Note: **Canon upstages me! This just goes to show that any time I think there's a line on this show between practicality and acceptability, it's gonna get crossed. I should've caught a clue when John Winchester ordered Dean to break into the nearest funeral home and steal blood from corpses.

Damn, I need to write faster.

Regarding the anticoagulant: blood in Kripke's world seems to be made from corn starch, corn syrup, and red food coloring, which pours well and stores fine at room temperature. The real thing sets up like cheese curds a few minutes after exposure to air, and the smell of rotten blood is a pretty significant component of the smell of rotten corpse. Sam was carrying it around for days without refrigeration. I'd say he cut it with whiskey and ate a lot of mints.

Anyway, to get the blood back out of a milk jug once it's been let stand for an hour or so, they'd have to whisk it vigorously or throw in some heparin beforehand.


	2. Verse

"Dean—I'm _high_, not lobotomized. Give it." It would've been funny if Sam's next words hadn't been, "I can get it for myself."

Dean stopped in the middle of the hall. There were dead cops lying where they'd dropped in every doorway, at the foot of every chair, leaning on the edges of desks, and over all of them the gunpowder smell of burnt demon. He and Sam had killed all these people, to get at the demons.

Sam's hand landed on his shoulder, a little too heavy and a little too tight. Heat was pouring off him, but he wasn't sweating.

He wished Sam had been more tractable as a kid. "Why do you need it?" he asked, shaking off Sam's grip and his own chills and speeding down the hallway.

"I can't see," Sam growled, pacing him. Sam was walking sideways, long shanks crisscrossing over the floor tiles, eyes darting between Dean and Dean's backpack, fists twitching.

"Your eyes look fine."

"I can't _see,_" Sam repeated, as if that was supposed to mean something.

Dean waved the case of lock picks in his face as they approached the cells. Corpse, corpse, guard-station, corpse, camera. "Get us in," he ordered, pointing at the main gate.

"Dean—"

"Talk while you pick. Sam, please." Sam stared him down for a long moment, then slowly took the picks and knelt in front of the lock. Dean breathed. "Sam. You know how when I was, when I was with the demon last night, how I was strung out up to Everest and firing on two cylinders, a pile of caltrops, and human lard?"

"What?" Sam asked, brow crinkling.

Dean winced. "Don't ask. You know what I mean? Sam?"

Sam huffed, eyed the lock, and switched out a scrub for a snake. "Yeah, I noticed."

Dean leaned in and gripped his jacket. Sam was quivering, his neck was burning like an electric stove. "Well, that's not how I felt," Dean whispered. "And that's not how that demon felt. Because I knew, and it knew, I was at the top of that game." His throat clenched, and he swallowed. "I was flyin', Sam. I knew what I was doing, everything, and I had a plan, and a method, and I was working on a _concept_, I was working on my goddamn Ph.D. And I'm not proud of what I did, but how I did it—I was good, I was _Mozart_. _That's_ what you walked in on."

Sam's hands slackened over the lock. "What're you saying," he asked, voice steady, too steady. Vulcan. Mood swing could hit any second.

"I'm saying that's where you talked me down from," Dean muttered into his ear. "I was on a roll, but my brain was on a long winding track to nowhere, and you got me off of it. I trusted you, and you got me off of it. You did good. Now it's my turn."

Dean was bent so close that he could feel Sam's skin jump ten degrees, hear him stop breathing for a moment. There was a creak of teeth grinding, and his own heart skipped, stumbled. Sam was frozen like a scorpion waiting to strike.

The lock clicked. Sam spun the tension wrench around, packed up the picks, and pushed through the gate. Dean followed, sagging with relief.

"What can't you see?" Dean asked.

"Demons." Sam was in the lead, passing a cell every two strides.

"You think you missed any?"

Sam stopped, and Dean bumped into him, the bottles in the backpack sloshing.

It was the last cell in the lockup, packed with stiffs in uniform all rayed out around the ghost-pale body of Jimmy Novak dangling by chained wrists from the ceiling, as motionless as they'd left the demon in the boxcar. His chest was brick-brown with dried blood, and weeping cuts still held the shape of an Angel-Be-Gone. His back was tenderized, gouged, and smeared with something black and stinking.

Sam was staring, shocked. "He banished himself," he breathed.

"Dammit, Cas," growled Dean. He tried the door, stepping in black slime and bumping his boot against an invisible mass. "I think you exploded a hellhound, Sammy," he remarked.

"Didn't know I could do that," Sam whispered.

"Yeah, well. Door's unlocked." Dean planted his foot against the wall and heaved the sliding gate open until it jammed against a dead officer's arm. He slipped through; Sam lingered outside. "You coming?"

Sam averted his eyes. "You'd better get him down."

"He's not Riki-Tiki-Tavi. You're not an animal."

"Humor me."

Dean negotiated the masses of still-warm human flesh. Cops. Good, or well-intentioned guys, saving people from the things you couldn't turn to dust with an iron slug on the night of a harvest moon, that you couldn't bar from entry with pure elements and choice words in dead languages. He squeezed one boot between an arm and a torso, the other between a thigh and a face. Cas' cuffs looked like a cakewalk; the lock was police standard. He didn't see any Enochian, no Theban, no Aramaic, just 1020STAINLESS etched on the side of the hinge. No symbols on the cell walls. The ointment they'd painted on his back looked greasy and toxic.

Thready pulse. Wide dark pupils, no reaction as he pulled the lids up. Dean glanced down at Jimmy's legs, and saw that the left shin was a weeping mass of purple and red, with lines and arcs of punctures. Dog bite.

"Toss me the kit," Dean ordered.

Sam flicked the folder of picks into his hand. Dean used the handcuff key, lowered Jimmy to the floor, and switched him into a fireman's carry. As he picked his way toward the door, he heard the wet crunch of snapping bone: Sam had put his back into it and forced the gate past and through the dead man's arm where Dean had let it stop.

"Uh. Thanks," Dean said, stepping through.

"Move," Sam growled, double-timing back through the ward.

Sam was right. They were on a time crunch.

Getting through the station had set them back four minutes; getting back might take one or two. Sam was prowling ahead, quick as a wolf and still as a spider, as Dean made short strides under Jimmy's comatose weight.

They were in view of the door, surrounded by the bodies of intake personnel and the scrawled lamens of high-level demons, when Dean saw a woman walking, two fingers outstretched and reaching for Sam.

"On your left!" Dean bellowed.

Sam corkscrewed on his feet, dropping faster than gravity could pull and hitting the floor on one palm. His other hand whipped up and his face blanked, distant and pleased like whatever his powers were doing to his brain was butter and honey, long hot showers, the first good stretch after a day on the road—

The angel fluttered aside, slipped her hands into his belt, and slid out Zachariah's sword. "Poor man," she said, reappearing two steps away from him, the angel's weapon balanced on her fingertips.

Sam's hand shuddered. He pried himself upright, snarling, but the angel was already gone. The angel was reaching for Dean's face.

Dean had the demon-killing knife, but more importantly, he had an unconscious Castiel heavy in his arms.

The other angel had chosen a steely woman, like a schoolteacher, and had a calm walk and a lined face full of sympathy and resignation. She stared full into Dean's eyes as her fingers extended. Her hands were empty. Dean pitched Castiel onto a nearby desk and dove in the opposite direction, scanning the belt of her suit-skirt for a sheath or whatever angels used to carry their swords—there was nothing, not even a bulge. Dean scrambled along the floor, some crazy train of thought suggesting he use the desks as cover, but the angel fluttered again and cut him off. Dean sprung backwards, bouncing on his tailbone.

Then he felt the sickening gravity-gone-nuts jerk of a demon wrapping its phantom fingers around him, ready to slam him against the nearest wall. There was a demon. Sam had missed it, or it was smart enough to wait outside the trap—what's one more demon-angel party on the old journal?

Dean skidded backwards over the tiles, bootheels digging in uselessly.

He didn't slam against a wall. On his way, the sideways gravity changed its grip to his shoulders and its pull toward the ceiling, and he flailed his arms in the air until he collided with Sam's chest. Sam's furnace-hot arm clamped around him as the pull stopped.

There was no demon, only Sam.

Sam lifted the Knife from his belt, fabric shredded, and Dean's backpack felt lighter. Dean protested. "Sam!"

"Poor man," the angel repeated, as Sam let go of Dean to get both hands free. "That won't help you."

Sam hip-checked Dean to the floor as he lifted a bottle and the Knife, stabbed through the flimsy plastic, and shotgunned the blood from the jagged hole. Blood dribbled down his throat and his hands and his wrists, and clung to the blade like oil, reeking of gunsmoke, gangrene, and death. Dean scrambled to his feet, but Sam had already finished. He shoved the knife and bottle into Dean's shaken grip.

Sam was on the blood, and Dean was physically unable to keep him from what he wanted.

He met Dean's eyes for an instant; Sam's looked too dark, crazed, and whether that was shadow or wide pupils or black bleeding out again, Dean didn't want to know.

"Leave him," Sam growled, spinning to face the angel and shoving Dean behind his back.

There was the whole stupid dance, right in front of him. Sam wanted Castiel safe, but not as much as he wanted Dean safe, while Dean had assumed Sam was set on getting their friend back with or without him. Neither of them were good at reckoning costs. So here they were, Sam with blood all down his front and the city of Argonne lawless because Dean had broken out Alistair's lamen on an unlucky demon with a smoking habit.

Across from Sam, the angel cocked her head. "It didn't work," she said.

Sam shivered. "What?"

"You are more determined than ever," she explained. "I was trying to be humane."

Sam's breath hissed through his teeth. He raised his hand, fingers tightening on the air.

"Stop," the angel scolded. "You are only hurting yourself." Then she fluttered again.

All the hair on the back of Dean's neck was already on high alert, but still he caught the tail end of a wingbeat, the weight of eyes behind him, the scuff of a shoe, and he spun, lashing out with the knife, and lodged it handle-to-ribs in the angel's chest. It flared and sparked ineffectually. She looked down, unperturbed as Castiel had been, and handed it back to Dean, hilt-first.

It rested in his clammy palm.

Sam yanked him back by his shirt collar. "Get Cas and run," he snarled. There was no rage in his snarl. Sam turned toward the angel, eager, predatory, drunk and giddy with power, before his face blanked like a Buddhist monk's and his palm extended.

Dean sprinted back to Castiel and slung him over his shoulder again.

Sam faltered. As Dean hustled for the exit, he could see Sam wobbling on his feet, see blood from his nose trickle down to join the blood around his mouth, see the angel freeze before him, one slender hand pressed against the wound in her chest. Her mouth dropped open and she began to wail.

She wailed with the vessel's voice, and her true voice joined it.

Sam, like a moron, was going to stand there and let her punch his ears out.

Castiel wasn't going anywhere. Dean propped Jimmy up against the wall at the station entrance, then raced back to Sam, both hands over his ears. He caught him by the jacket just as Sam started to sway into a face-plant. "Upsy-daisy," Dean gasped, and _where the hell did that come from?_ But the screaming had moved into his skull now, his ears were bleeding, white spots were blooming in his vision, and no-one in the building was hearing any human sounds.

Sam's free arm pawed at him; his burning hand wrapped around Dean's shoulder. Dean checked his face, and Sam was twitching and grimacing, eyes squinching shut and snapping wide, now black, now normal. The angel's face was turned to the ceiling, her eyes and open mouth shining white like Zachariah's had when Dean had killed him. Her hands stuck out stiff-open at her sides. Dean tugged Sam backward by his jacket, steadying him with his shoulder, and Sam took a shaky step into him. "Time to run, Sam."

Tug, step. Tug, step. Sam was bleeding from the ears and both nostrils. Dean swiped at his own face and found somebody's blood in his eye.

"Sam! Give it up, we'll lose 'er on the road!" Dean barked, pulling harder. Sam grunted, an inhuman rumble that Dean could feel through his chest. The screaming and the angel's light guttered, and then she fluttered out, leaving the station dim and ringing. A smudge of blood, far too much to be from the demon residue on the Knife, marked where she had stood.

Sam collapsed on Dean's shoulder, and they made a tripod for a few moments until Dean managed to shove Sam back upright.

"Let's move!" Dean shouted.

Sam blinked at him, pained and deflated, before stumbling out the door on his own power. Dean, panting, lifted Castiel and followed him to the Civic.

* * *

**Note: **As far as I can tell, what happened with Famine was like Famine swallowing a pound of steel ball bearings then Sam ripping them out through the evil energy being's equivalent to a stomach using a giant electromagnet. What happened here with the angel is like if Dean stuffed a couple wads of steel wool into her wound and then Sam turned on a giant microwave.

I'm not entirely sure what the word 'lamen' means, but in Key of Solomon, it refers to the symbol of magician's patron demon, worn to represent their contract. I figure it's a bit like a seal, to mark out the demon's territory.

As for Alistair's lamen: if the name of God causes pain to a demon, what about the name of Hell's chief torturer? Obviously this wouldn't work too well on Alistair himself.


	3. Coda

Castiel woke up when they were thirty minutes out, tearing down the four-lane highway with Sam grunting and shivering in the backseat and Dean humming at the top of his lungs, thinking _please don't seize. Please don't seize. Please don't seize._

Cas woke with a weird reverse-barking noise, arms and legs springing out every which-way and almost knocking the car out of DRIVE. Dean felt his heart skip. "Cas! You're out!"

Cas hyperventilated, eyes darting over the cars and hills, uncomprehending.

"Cas, look at me!"

"Dean." The angel's voice was raw, harsher than usual if that was possible.

"Hey, man."

Cas winced and curled forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

Dean split his attention between the road, Sam in the rearview mirror, and Castiel. "We gotcha. We're hidden pretty good right now, headed for the car, then a nice hidey-hole we'll cover with salt."

"Heaven," Castiel ground out.

"Some angel showed up," Dean said. "Sam took care of her. No idea if it'd even work on her, but when _Sam has a plan_—"

"Worked," Sam groaned, "like…horseman. Angel. Same deal."

"You scared the crap out of me," Dean muttered, watching the curve of Sam's back as he lay sideways across the back seats.

"You knew what to do," Sam babbled. "Always…knows."

There was a thud; Sam had kicked a passenger door. Dean signaled for a turnoff and looked at Castiel. He still looked like crap on a stick, like they'd left the demon looking last night. "Hey. You all right? There any spellwork we can take off you, get you back on your wings?"

Castiel blinked at him, then looked down at his hands, at his torn wrists. He shuddered.

"That stuff on your back," Dean persisted. "What's that doing?"

Castiel reached around one of his shoulders, rubbing off some of the viscous black slime that was staining the Civic's cheap upholstery. "Ink," he said. "It's just ink."

Sam interrupted them with a deafening scream. "RUBY!"

Dean's leg jerked against the accelerator and they almost rear-ended a Suburban. _I'm going to go off the rails,_ he realized. _We're not gonna make it._ "So, Cas," he continued, his voice crumbling under the false confidence he was shoveling onto it, "any ceremonies, any supplies we'll need to lift whatever those sonsabitches laid on you, just, uh, start talking."

Castiel let his head drop toward the footwell. "There's nothing," he said, the words muffled. "Nothing's left."

Under the crude smears of ink on his back, lines of small raised cuts marked out two rune-like shapes. Two stylized, mocking, wings.

* * *

_The whole thing had started like this:_

There were a lot of demons in the area. Way too many, way too many omens, but no real concentration of power. A lot of little demons. Argonne was a hotspot for demonic possession, a curiosity for the Winchesters. Then there'd been the email from Chuck. Castiel was alive, in town, and being tortured. The hotspot became a priority. They slunk into the area, nabbed a random demon on his smoking break using a trap and a whole pile of salt, iron chains, and amulets, and were faced with the problem of getting the information they wanted out of a monster that was older and smarter than either of them.

Dean had made a shopping list and sent Sam into town, remaining in the shipping container to guard their informant. The place had possibilities: eyes built for cargo netting, a flat floor, and no windows.

When Sam got back, they strung the demon up per Dean's instructions. Sam removed the gag, and the thing spat venom at them for the time it took Dean to free up some duck tape and seal over the host's mouth and chin. Dean squinted off into space for a moment, then drew an odd pentacle over the tape in Sharpie. The demon cringed.

"Uh. Dean?" Sam asked, brow crinkling. "We kinda need him to talk."

Dean stripped off his jacket and flannel, laying them neatly in a corner of the boxcar. He looked at Sam, pained. The sun was setting, the gold of it sneaking through the maple leaves and the cargo door to flare around the edges of Sam's silhouette. "Trust me," Dean said. He grimaced. "Just…go somewhere. I'll call you when it's over. Please don't listen."

"Okay," Sam said.

"Take the car."

Sam nodded and backed his way out. The car rumbled off down the dirt track, and Dean shut his eyes for a long moment, until the only sound was the thin squeak of breath through the host's nose. He lit the kerosene lamp, hung it up so he had good light for his workspace, and picked up a small knife.

He didn't once look at the demon until he'd cut the clothes from the host, not so much as grazing the skin, and kicked them aside. Then he stared it in the eyes, dull, calm. They flicked black.

"You're gonna tell me where the angel Castiel is," Dean told it, breathing its breath. "When you're good and ready, I'm gonna take that tape off and listen." He went to the table, contemplated the bucket of salt and the wire brush. "But if your first words aren't, 'thank-you, Dean, for the privilege of spilling my guts to you, now here's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' then you got nothing I wanna hear."

There was a stench of body odor in the container now, over the smells of loam, litter, and disuse. Soon there would be blood. Offal. Bile. Other things. He picked up a rubber wading boot and a gas can full of holy water. "In the mean time, there's some things I been wanting to try." He grinned. "Let's make my dead boss proud."

When Sam had driven away from the boxcar, he'd gone as far as the little rise that the path crawled up, turned the Impala around, killed the engine, and coasted back downhill. The steel of the container walls was ringing with murmurs (Dean's) and quick footsteps (Dean's) and groans and the creaking of chains. Sam crept around the back of the container and pressed himself against it, taking deep calming breaths.

Last year, he should have been wondering how much Dean understood about monsters. Should have taken Dean at his word, maybe. But last year was over, and they were past the questions of who knows what, who suffered when, who stared hardest into the abyss, and who's on whose side.

Sam waited in the shadow of the boxcar, where the birds had already fled. Dean was hurting on the other side of the wall, and there was nowhere else Sam needed to be.

* * *

**Note:** Well. That was quite a body count.

Demon hunters exist in this horrifying ethical twilight, because to kill a demon, it seems to be necessary to kill the host. Save a host, leave future generations to deal with the demon. Make a preemptive strike against demon-kind, murder a civilian and potential new demon hunter. Decisions, decisions.

Sam's decision to nuke the entire police station was largely motivated by fear in this story-fear of failure, fear of alerting any watching angels to their presence-and fear, in my experience, is one of the primary culprits behind lax ethical conduct.


End file.
